Many Japanese words of Portuguese origin entered the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

when Portuguese

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

priests introduced Christian ideas, Western science, technology and new products to the Japanese during the

Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by ...

(15th and 16th centuries). The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach Japan and the first to establish direct trade between Japan and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, in 1543. During the 16th and 17th century, Portuguese

Jesuits , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders = ...

had undertaken a great work of

Catechism A catechism (; from grc, κατηχέω, "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adul ...

, that ended only with religious persecution in the early

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

(Tokugawa Shogunate). The Portuguese were the first to translate Japanese to a Western language, in the

Nippo Jisho The or ''Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam'' (''Vocabulário da Língua do Japão'' in modern Portuguese; "Vocabulary of the Language of Japan" in English) is a Japanese to Portuguese dictionary compiled by Jesuit missionaries and published in ...

(日葡辞書, literally the "Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary") or Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam compiled by Portuguese Jesuit João Rodrigues, and published in Nagasaki in 1603, who also wrote a grammar . The dictionary of Japanese-Portuguese explained 32,000 Japanese words translated into Portuguese. Most of these words refer to the products and customs that first came to Japan via the Portuguese traders.

List of direct loanwords

Many of the first words which were introduced and entered the Japanese language from Portuguese and

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

are written in ''

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...

'' or ''

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contras ...

,'' rather than ''

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

'', which is the more common way to write

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...

s in Japanese in modern times. ''Kanji'' versions of the words are ''

ateji In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji use ...

'', characters that are "fitted" or "applied" to the words by the Japanese, based on either the pronunciation or the meaning of the word. The † indicates the word is archaic and no longer in use. }" is sometimes mistaken as an ''ateji'' for " ja, トタン, label=none", but is actually a different word of native origin meaning "agony". , - , ''

tempura is a typical Japanese dish usually consisting of seafood, meat and vegetables that have been battered and deep fried. The dish was introduced by the Portuguese in Nagasaki through fritter-cooking techniques in the 16th century. The word ...

'' , :ja:天ぷら / 天麩羅 / 天婦羅 , deep-fried seafood/vegetables , tempero, temperar;Tracking Down Tempura by Takashi Morieda
tempora , tempero, temperar; tempora , seasoning, to season; times of abstinence from meat , , - , ''zabon'' , :ja:ざぼん / 朱欒 / 香欒 ,

pomelo The pomelo ( ), ''Citrus maxima'', is the largest citrus fruit from the family Rutaceae and the principal ancestor of the grapefruit. It is a natural, non-hybrid, citrus fruit, native to Southeast Asia. Similar in taste to a sweet grapefr ...

, shaddock , zamboa , zamboa ,

, shaddock , , - , † ''zesu'' or ''zezusu'' , ゼス, ゼズス , Jesus , Jesu , Jesus , Jesus , The modern term イエス (''Iesu'') is a reconstruction of the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

term.

List of indirect loanwords

False cognates

Some word pairs that appear similar are actually

false cognate False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the Eng ...

s of unrelated origins.

Arigatō

It is often suggested that the Japanese word ''arigatō'' derives from the Portuguese ''obrigado'', both of which mean "Thank you", but evidence indicates ''arigatō'' has a purely Japanese origin, so these two words are

s. ''Arigatō'' is an "u"-sound change of ''arigataku''. In turn, ''arigataku'' is the adverbial form of an adjective ''arigatai'', from older ''arigatashi'', itself a compound of ''ari'' + ''katashi''. Written records of ''arigatashi'' exist dating back to the ''

Man'yōshū The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...

'' compiled in the 8th century AD, well before Japanese contact with the Portuguese in the 16th century. ''Ari'' is a conjugation of verb ''aru'' meaning "to be", and ''katashi'' is an adjective meaning "difficult", so ''arigatashi'' literally means "difficult to exist", hence "rare" and thus "precious", with usage shifting to indicate gratitude for receiving an outstanding kindness. The phrase to express such gratitude is ''arigatō gozaimasu'', or ''arigatō'' for short.

Other words not of Portuguese origin

References

External links

sci.lang.japan FAQ Japanese words of Portuguese origin
{{Japanese language Japanese Words Of Portuguese Origin Portuguese Japanese Portuguese

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

Words of Portuguese origin Japan–Portugal relations Portuguese language in Asia